These are my notes from Richard Beach’s keynote, “Different Purposes for Using of Digital Tools to Teach Literacy in the College Classroom” at the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education “Reading Conference: 21st Century Learning Environments” on September 24, 2010. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.
Web links for Richard Beach:
– Richard on Twitter: @rbeach
– Richard’s professional wiki: digitalwriting.pbworks.com
– K12Online Conference Ning Profile page
– Richard’s 2009 K-12 Online Conference presentation: “Using VideoAnt Annotations to Provide “Audience-Based” Assessment to Students’ Video Productions”
– Richard is a co-author of the book, “Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools” and the book, “Teachingmedialiteracy.com: A Web-linked Guide to Resources and Activities”
Today’s resources are available on
Richard’s Google Doc for today
Today’s backchannel on Today’s Meet (Transcript is available)
Research shows most 8th grade teachers are still doing traditional writing activities, NOT with computers, because testing regimes reinforce traditional print literacy curriculum
Jeff Uteckt: Literacy Curriculum Models
– Today’s model of literacy development: Print literacy, digital literacy, networked literacy
[NOT SURE IF THIS IS A REFERENCE TO Jeff Utecht]
iPad is going to have a HUGE impact
– tools -> purposes -> reading / writing / communicating
You’re going to see a ton of apps for younger kids especially
Web 2.0 tools: Affordances
1- Interactivity: both read and write
– students as consumers and producers
2- multimodality
– combine images, video, music and text
3- hyperlinked
– connected texts
Our four purposes today:
1- how do you get information: acquiring / subscribing to / sharing information
2- collaborative construction of knowledge
3- formulating arguments using online role play / games
4- using audio feedback
Purpose 1: acquiring / subscribing to / sharing information
– key tool is social bookmarking
– this is SOCIAL
– one tool I use a lot in my classes is called Diigo
– some of you may be familiar with Delicious, I think diigo is better
– can setup class Diigo sharing site
Staring in the 5th century, people had “common place books”
– people would write all over the place on these books
– people learned from reading these
I am calling these now “digital common place texts”
– how do you help students share knowledge with each other in this way? Diigo is a good way to do this
Diigo.com social bookmarking
– setup groups based on classes
– students share bookmarks to the class
– students tag bookmarks
– students annotate online texts/sites using sticky notes
My personal learning network is how I develop professionally
– for me that includes my Diigo groups
Use Diigo to your web browser as an add-on
Textbooks are going to go away, they are all going to be online
– Textbook companies know this and they are scrambling now
Using example of “Womanhood” poem to show annotations with Diigo
free online books
– archive.org eBooks
– Open Library: 1 webpage for every book in the world
– Project Gutenberg
– Many Books
Use iAnnotate on the iPad to highlight and comment on PDF files ($10 app)
Most popular tool my teachers use and talk about: VoiceThread
– permits written as well as audio annotations
Now playing “What’s a VoiceThread anyway?”
Digital notetaking: Evernote is great
– this can be a big dumping ground for notes, and then you can share them
Essential concept: RSS Feed Aggregator
– teach your students to use Google Reader
– Bloglines is going bully up
Another tool: Digital Mind Mapping
– use to help students make connections between relationships in a text
– Examples: Inspiration, Bubbl.us, VUE, Cmap, Text2Mind Map, DebateMapper, Comapping, Compendium, WisdomMap, Freemind, My Mind, Belvedere, Mindomo, Mind 42, Umlet 3.2
– links to mind mapping tools are on digitalwriting.pbwiki.com/DigitalMapping
Wikis are for organizing information
– collaborative writing of reports / essays
– shared revision
– hyperlinking of texts
Blogs are spaces for students to write their own work
– I have my students have blog partners
THIS IS A GREAT IDEA: TO ENCOURAGE PARTNER COMMENTING
Blogs can be ePortfolios
– forget about commercial e
Rhetoric and Composition wikibook at St Cloud University:
– students can build on each other’s prior knowledge
Key to a good wiki is good CATEGORIES on the sidebar
– example: watsonmontana1948.pbworks.com
shared revision is easy to do in the page history
Example assignment I gave to my students
– observe a Dinkytown restaurant / shop
– inquiry: post some questions or develop an idea about the restaurant or coffee shop
– this is like Ethnography 101
– go to the site and take pictures / video and field notes within a blog post to be added to a wiki
– this is our wiki we build collaboratively in this project: depictingdinkytown.pbworks.com
Rural Voices project from the Univ of Nebraska is GREAT example of this type of ethnography
– using the technology to capture the images and voices of a place
Rural Voices, Country Schools
Rural Voices Radio in Nebraska
I LOVE Ning
– Richard’s private / invitation-only Ning for his digital writing classes: digitalwritingclass.ning.com
– In November we typically have to cancel some classes because of snow/weather
– we use synchronous chat in our Ning during these times (you have to pay $19 per month now to get chat, $19 per year for basic Ning)
Some faculty are now using Facebook for academic purposes
– I encourage faculty to use Facebook for personal uses
Formulating arguments using online role-play / games
– select an issue
– formulate a primary argument
– choose roles and conduct research
– post arguments on a blog or online forum
– step out of roles and reflect
this can help students learn to form coherent arguments
– doing online role plays
Reason many websites are blocked now in schools is because administrators are paranoid about liability, and schools outsource content filtering to other companies which are very conservative
AS AN ALTERNATIVE FOR AN ANNOTATING iPAD APP, A TWITTER USER SUGGESTED READDLE ($5 APP)
Used Ning and students had to create a profile on a Ning
– argument had to do about changing their school, something that actually could make a difference
Referencing
Research shows biggest problem with role play and argumentation for students is they do NOT know how to create “counter-argument”
Students in this project wrote a position paper, and then met with their tech person
– the tech person actually unblocked sites
– there are some reports on this
Post role-play reflection
– use of arguments
– comfort in role
– target audiences / alliances
– who has power (reasons and strategies)
– sense of potential change
These should be examples of “collaborative arguments” not just persuasive writing pieces composed entirely in isolation
critical element of inquiry: Identifying contradictions
final purpose: Developing a sense of Voice through podcasting / blogs
– book talks
– spoken word poetry
– reader’s theater productions
– Radio Shows
– Skype interviews
Resources on digitalwriting.pbworks.com/Creating-Podcasts-and-Vlogs
THESE ARE GREAT SUGGESTIONS!
Recommended podcast about educational technology and digital learning: Digital Campus from George Mason University
Feedback and self-reflection
– audio files as feedback to writing
– VoiceThread comments
– VideoAnt: Annotations for video productions
– Using Jing to record audio comments
– E-portfolios
VideoAnt, a free tool developed by our university
– has to be a video with a URL (YouTube videos work)
– put that URL into this
ant.umn.edu
Students should NOT attach video files to their blog posts, they are just too big (they should post them elsewhere, and link to / embed videos)
Now showing part of his 2009 K-12 Online Conference presentation: “Using VideoAnt Annotations to Provide “Audience-Based” Assessment to Students’ Video Productions”
Give feedback using screencasting
– Snapz Pro
– Jing (free)
Now showing: “An Example of Jing Used to Comment on Student Work Online” (by Shelly Blake-Plock)
The English Companion Ning is a fantastic resource with LOTS of groups and sub-groups
Technorati Tags:
college, conference, critical, digital, inquiry, literacy, oklahoma, reading, rose, state, teaching, tools, university, rosestate, rbeach, richard, beach
If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.
On this day..
- Applying STEM Skills with Robotic Sphero Balls (Donor’s Choose Project) – 2014
- Teens use Facebook primarily for private purposes – 2010
- Social Media Counter updated for September 2010 – 2010
- Standalone WiFi Skype Phones and Rocket Scientists – 2009
- Critical for Ning site administrators to address spam – 2009
- Visual Tapestry – Flight – 2009
- Visually exploring earth with Panoramio – 2008
- Seeking the elusive “inbox zero” – 2007
- Universities banning Skype – 2006
- Portaportal and flexibly learning new tools – 2006
Comments
One response to “Different Purposes for Using of Digital Tools to Teach Literacy in the College Classroom by Richard Beach”
Wes, thanks so much for your excellent summary–I really appreciate your taking the time to do this. I really enjoyed meeting you and your presentation. I’m amazed at how much you can accomplish–daily blogging, teaching, organizing the K12 conference, speaking, etc. (In your shot of you and your family in San Diego, that looked like Imperial Beach.)